Article 4: Salem and the Left

The Salem Witch Trials and the Social Justice Warrior Hysteria

Just a note:

We often think of the men who conducted the Salem witch trials. They were the judges and jurors.

But they weren't the accusers.

The accusers were a nine year old girl, an eleven year old girl, and a twelve year old girl.

It's important to remember that. Young people, especially young girls in a male-dominated society, may feel powerless. They may feel more acutely any ambient paranoia in a community.

Immature people of all genders and ages might be prone to this.

Lodging a hysterical accusation suddenly makes the powerless powerful, and the marginally noticed suddenly the center of attention.

In Salem in the seventeenth century, the ambient paranoia was the Devil's works and the afflictions (epilepsy, probably of a feigned type) he visited on people.

In the current age, it's "hatred." The Devil is still seeding the countryside with ills, but now he devotes most of his time to cake-based capers and/or organizing the occasional fraternity gang-assault.

You just need ambient paranoia, a power structure primed to go haywire the moment an accusation is hurled, and juvenile, marginal people who might greatly enjoy making their more powerful elders (or betters) dance like puppets at the end of their line.

Boys like throwing rocks at things for a simple reason: The feeling of power. Boys like seeing things topple over, break, or even die when they throw stones.

It is empowering on a primal level to see that one can cause dramatic -- destructive -- effects at a distance.

Throwing accusations gives one the same feeling of power.

A window wants to be broken.

A group of dour Puritans wants to be whipped into a devil-hunting mob.

A shouty, paranoid, hysterical media wants to be convulsed into fury and frenzy.

And as long as there are such inviting targets, which almost beg to have things thrown at them, things will indeed be thrown.

It's a stupid idea that some people have that we've gotten over this nonsense. Humanity has proven for 40,000 years it never gets over any of its nonsense, and never will. Humanity -- as a whole -- will still be the same stupid, dishonest, attention-seeking, demon-haunted idiots it always has been.

In fact, as some have argued, humanity is becoming net dumber, because prior ages -- harder ages -- never would have let so many dummies and basket-cases grow much past the age of 12.

Today's media are the hysterical judges of Salem, not only believing that the Devil puts dirty words on cakes when no one's looking, but secretly praying that he should do so, because they're hysterics too, and nothing pleases a hysteric more than confirmation that all of her hysterias are the actual facts of the world.

Satan's Bakery Aisle. I know the Devil isn't making cakes like the one claimed at Whole Foods. The Devil is a wily serpent.

His baked goods will be pleasing to the eye, inviting.

He is a tempter and a traitor. His works are more subtle.

Nietzsche once wrote, “He who fights with monsters, should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” How easy is it for ordinary humans to commit atrocious acts? History teaches us it’s pretty damn easy when you are blinded to your own hypocrisy. When you believe you are morally superior, when you have dehumanized those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. 

Prepare for the New Puritanism

November 18, 2017 by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Pendulums swing back. Revolutions fizzle out and a counter revolution takes place.

This will be true of the sexual revolution just as it has been for most every other revolution.

The present hunting season for male sexual predators is part of the beginning of the tide turning against the sexual revolution.

I predict the rise of a new Puritanism. This will not be a return to abundant, joyful, fertile married life, but the rise of suspicion, blaming, legalism and condemnation.

Think The Scarlet Letter.

I can see that the intolerance of sexual predation indicates an underlying impatience and dis satisfaction with the sexual free for all.

I predict, therefore that we will see some other trends emerging from the present situation.
I believe an increasing number of young people are going to re-examine their expectations about relationships. They will be intolerant of the “get drunk and get laid” atmosphere in colleges and begin looking for something else.

Along with a new Puritanism may be the kind of sexual inactivity and intentionally neutered society that seems to be emerging in Japan. The population crisis there is that too many young people are simply not very interested in sex and marriage– and they are certainly not interested in becoming mothers and fathers.

Prostitution, pornography and secret sex may also continue to steam roller our society as men flee from the entanglement and risk of sexual relationships and relieve their sexual urges in ways that do not require relationships.

I am an optimist, however, and I can see that many young people will begin to turn towards the ideal of marriage  between one man and one woman for life as the only real answer to the sexual free for all with its contraception, abortion, broken homes, broken hearts and broken lives.
The necessary action at this stage is for the church not to preach against promiscuity and prostitution and porn so much as to show young families growing and worshipping and serving and being happy together.


A community of loving, healthy, fecund and happy families is the greatest attraction and the ultimate thing that is beautiful, true and good in human sexuality.

A new Puritanism will be the devil’s counterfeit–a Puritanism which is judgmental, legalistic, negative and sterile.

A new Purity is the real answer–in which human sexuality blossoms in real, life long, fertile and abundant loving life.

In other words: Christian marriage.

November 18th, 2017

As the sexual misbehavior accusations accumulate in the world of politics, entertainment and business, prepare for the new Puritanism.

I have written more on this over at my main blog here, but suffice it to say that things really are changing. Liberal commentators have observed that the things liberal women were willing to put up with and gloss over in the nineties with Bill Clinton are no longer acceptable.

Furthermore, the news columns and opinions of people like Gloria Stenheim are being resurrected and are now coming back to haunt them. This article in the Atlantic rings the bell of reckoning.
What does this new and unexpected social phenomenon mean?

I think it indicates that a new generation of women don’t give two hoots about the old feminist agenda. The main objectives for women have been pretty much obtained-fair pay and fair treatment in the workplace. Now a new generation of women is saying, “We don’t have to put up with the harassment and objectification that still continues.

Hands off!

This is very interesting because, whether they like it or not, the modern women who take this view are echoing a very traditional set of values–ones which their great grandmothers would have recognized.

Its called modesty. In the past women were expected to draw the line, slap the man’s hand away and refuse a kiss until he was worthy.

The woman was the one who was supposed to be pure and unsullied and the keep the sexually-devious man at bay.

While we are not quite to that point, I can see it coming. Women should continue to take pride and not only keep the predatory man at bay, but go the next step and refuse to have sexual relations with him unless he is interested in a continuing relationship, and for her own sake she should insist that the relationship be monogamous, that he should support her desire to have children and to do this they should stay together for life.

And that, by the way, is what we call Christian marriage.